This article contains MAJOR SPOILERS for The Wheel of Time season 3 Episode 8, as well as Robert Jordan's book series.
The third season of The Wheel of Time is at an end, but we'll be reeling from its finale for quite a while yet. "He Who Comes With The Dawn" was the arguably the darkest episode of the entire show's run, with our heroes losing on multiple fronts, sometimes with fatal consequences. Where they did triumph, like in the Aiel Waste, those victories came at such steep costs that they were bonechilling. Is Rand al'Thor (Josha Stradowski) going to go mad? Will Moiraine Damodred (Rosamund Pike) recover from her horrible duel with the Forsaken Lanfear (Natasha O'Keeffe)? It'll be a while until we find out the details, and something tells me that wait will be excruciating.
During Rand and Moiraine's trip to Rhuidean earlier in the season, it was heavily foreshadowed that in order for Rand to survive to fight in the Last Battle, Moiraine had to die. We saw many different variations of Moiraine's death, including multiple that occurred in the Aiel Waste during her duel with Lanfear that happens in the finale. And she very nearly does die; Lanfear runs her through with her own Warder's sword. Only the death of Moiraine's lover Siuan, half a world away, gives her the wild burst of strength she needs to fight Lanfear off and survive the encounter.
So does this mean that Moiraine has evaded death? What about the Rhuidean visions that said her demise was inevitable? And how does this all shake out for Moiraine in the books?
What happens to Moiraine in The Wheel of Time books?
The first thing to know is that in The Wheel of Time books by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson, Moiraine does not duel Lanfear in the Aiel Waste. This scene is invented entirely for the show, which means Moiraine's brush with death during the fight also does not happen in the books. Instead, she mostly serves as an observer while Rand proves himself the Car'a'carn of the Aiel. The show gave Moiraine a much more thrilling conclusion for the season, likely because it would have been pretty lame television to sideline the show's biggest star in its finale.
However, there is a very firm basis for the rivalry between Lanfear and Moiraine, and the show has been foreshadowing it for a while. In the fifth book, The Fires of Heaven, Lanfear attacks Rand's party on the docks of Cairhien. Earlier in the story, Moiraine had the redstone doorframe ter'angreal of the Eelfinn — which is in Rhuidean in the books rather than Tanchico like the show — transported there as well. When Lanfear attacks, Moiraine makes the bold decision to tackle the Forsaken through the doorframe. They both vanish and the doorframe is destroyed, seemingly killing them. In a letter written by Moiraine which Rand opens after the encounter, she reveals that this fate was foretold to her in Rhuidean, and she went to it willingly.
While Moiraine survived her encounter with Lanfear in the season 3 finale, I would bet quite a lot of money that the red doorframe moment from the books is still coming in season 4. It's one of the most iconic scenes in the entire book series, and a critical one for the story, as it removes a key mentor from Rand and forces him to step up and make his own decisions without her guidance.
However, even that isn't quite the end of the story for Moiraine. To talk about the rest, we have to get into MAJOR SPOILERS for the book series up to the very end.
Moiraine's ultimate fate in The Wheel of Time
For years, author Robert Jordan let readers believe that Moiraine was truly dead in the book series. But in the eleventh novel, Knife of Dreams, it's revealed that she survived her trip through the redstone doorframe, and has been trapped in the realm of the Eelfinn and Aelfinn ever since.
In the penultimate novel of The Wheel of Time book series, Towers of Midnight, Mat Cauthon and Thom Merrilin launch a daring mission to the realm of the Finns through the mythical Tower of Ghenjei. They makes his way through the Finns unsettling dimension until they find Moiraine, who is greatly weakened after having her energy drained by them for years. At great personal cost to himself, Mat manages to rescue Moiraine and escape the tower with Thom.
Moiraine's return is a crucial part of the Last Battle, where her support ultimately helps Rand win the day. She survives that final conflict in the books, and is one of the few characters left standing by the end. So if she does end up going through the redstone doorframe ter'angreal in the television series, it's entirely possible we'll see her return late in the show's run.
But we've a ways to go before that point. For now, all eight episodes of The Wheel of Time season 3 are available to stream on Prime Video.
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